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On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:27:31 Christopher Walters wrote: |
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> I will mention that the performance optimizations for Gentoo mainly lie in |
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> the kernel configuration (the binary distributions compile just about |
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> everything you can imagine into their kernels), and in fine tuning the USE |
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> flags, so you you don't pull in anything you neither want nor need, thus |
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> limiting bloat. |
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Gentoo is also great if you want to run it on any out-of-the-ordinary |
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hardware, or if you have niche needs. |
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I personally don't view Gentoo as a "distro" in the traditional sense. To me, |
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it's a build system, an app - portage or paludis - and the devs that make |
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cool input files for that app. Building a distro from scratch for embedded |
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devices is a painful process if you don't have an automated build system. |
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It's not quite a trivial exercise, but portage does make it a whole lot |
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easier. |
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With overlays and ebuilds I write myself, I get all the benefits of compiling |
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from source, plus all the benefits of a sane package manager, without any of |
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the downsides of trying to combine them. I've tried to include third party |
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rpm repos on RHEL, it was a disaster. 4 years later I still can't make head |
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or tail of what the heck urpmi wants me to do. But an ebuild, well that's |
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just a simple bash include file. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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